


Bleed to Clear

by Pippin



Series: Christmas Presents 2015 [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5496932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippin/pseuds/Pippin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When two people had as tormented a past as they did, bad nights tended to be inevitable.  Luckily, they knew how to handle it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bleed to Clear

When two people had as tormented a past as Clint and Natasha did, bad nights tended to be inevitable.  All of it came down to one common theme: brainwashing.  The kills and missions that they had participated in of their own free will didn’t haunt them, or at least not nearly as much, but it was the memories of what they had done while under others’ control that woke them in the night.

For Natasha, memories of the Red Room came with mixed feelings.  She had to appreciate on some level what they had done for her, and she had never quite lost her love of and appreciation for ballet, but she hated that she had never had a say in everything that they had made her do.

For Clint, it all came back to Loki and that whole fiasco.  He held a mixture of hatred and fear towards what he had been forced to do, and it all still haunted him.

Needless to say, the bad nights came.  They weren’t common, but they still came.  And when they did, they were crippling.

***

The room was nearly pitch black, with only the slightest hints of moonlight coming in around the heavy curtains.  It was enough for Natasha to see Clint by, so that she could wake him without accidentally poking his eye out or something.

It took him a moment to come back to himself after Natasha woke him, but then Clint was lucid again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Natasha asked, and he shook his head.

“Same shit as usual, to be honest.  I just need to get it out of my head.”

Natasha nodded, then climbed out of bed.  She grabbed two bags from under the bed and held them up.  “Where’s next on our list?”

“That hike, I think.  The twenty mile one.”  Clint started getting dressed, trying to shake off the lingering images of his nightmare.

“Let’s go, then.”

***

The woods weren’t quiet, not filled as they were with soft rustling and animal calls, but there was a distinct lack of manmade noises, one that both Natasha and Clint appreciated.  That was part of the reason that they came out here when they had a bad night.

The other reason was simple: they needed the distraction.  They needed to get away from people and anything that could remind them of the things that they had done.  They had an entire list, one that they cycled through and added onto as new ideas came to them.  Hikes, whitewater rafting, mountain climbing, hang gliding—anything that was an adventure and somewhat physically demanding, they did.

They walked in silence for a while, both appreciating the calm.

“I wish I could get it out of my head,” Clint said suddenly.  “Everything that he made me do.  The worst part was that I was there, trapped in my own head, watching as my body did things without my consent or direction.”

Natasha said nothing—she couldn’t, not really.  Her situation was so different.  She regretted it all now and wished she hadn’t done it, but the fact of the matter was that, at the time, she had completely believed that what she had been doing was right.  The Red Room had forced them to believe it.  So she really couldn’t say anything, but she could listen.

“I’m terrified of losing control, even in harmless situations.  I’m even scared to get drunk or anything.  Anything where I’m not in total control of my mind and body is something I instinctively want to avoid.”

Clint sighed.  “I feel like working with the rest of the team is my atonement for what Loki made me do.”

“You have red in your ledger,” Natasha murmured, and Clint nodded.

“Yeah, that’s it.  But I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.”  He looked around, then hopped to grab the lowest branch of a nearby tree.  He swung himself further up into the branches, until Natasha couldn’t see him anymore.  She decided to wait on the ground for him, since she wasn’t as comfortable with heights as he was, and he seemed like he needed some private time anyway.

It was twenty minutes until he came down again.  Natasha was lying on the ground at the base of the tree, doing one of her weird dancer’s stretches, but she hopped up when Clint landed near her head.

“Feeling better?”

He nodded.  “Much.  I’ll race you back to the car.”

Natasha took off running.

***

Natasha won, by a good few minutes.

“You cheated,” Clint complained between gasps as he leaned on the car and glared at her.

“I didn’t have _that_ much of a head start.  You’re just slow and out of shape,” she teased back.

“Yeah, yeah, I guess I just don’t need to do quite as much running as you do.  I mostly sit on a rooftop and shoot a weapon straight out of the middle ages.”

“Maybe we should change your name to something more reflective of that.  Hawkeye seems a little modern.”

Clint flipped Natasha off as he slid into the car.

***

The pair returned to their apartment to the sound of the “Avengers alarm,” as Tony called it, going off.

Clint sighed.  “It just never stops, does it?”

Natasha shrugged.  “At least we can redeem ourselves.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Hannah, who specified the pairing, then added "when one of them is having bad nightmares/delusions, they take a trip and go on an outdoor adventure like climbing a mountain or whitewater rafting or some sort of outdoor survival challenge." This sort of fills that, maybe, I guess.
> 
> Other than that, I have to admit that I'm not entirely happy with this--for whatever reason, I just cannot write these two right now. Oh, well. Sorry, Hannah.


End file.
